Finding and celebrating your creativity

Category: Not giving up

I love the sentiments in this article about finding new and exciting things to do at any stage in your life. I know quite a few people who seem to think that getting older means giving up. I don’t feel like that at all. I’m moving towards the time when I’ll retire from fulltime paid employment, but I have no intention of retiring from life. If anything, I’m planning to do all of the things that I don’t currently have the time or energy to do.

It’s never too late to re-invent yourself

Life is often about finding and re-finding ourselves. As we change over the years our perception of who we are also changes. While we might think that having grey hair means that we should stop trying to re-invent ourselves, I don’t agree. I suspect that it might be harder because there are so many strong stereotypes around older women, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. One of the joys of getting older is that you care less about what other people think, which is very helpful.

Your new found freedom is a gift

If your children have flown the coop, you might be in the position of having a little more time on your hands. If there is something you want to do, what’s stopping you? This could be the perfect time to take on a new challenge whatever stage of life you are at. The trick is to focus on what makes you feel happy, ignore other people, and go for it.

Yesterday I received an email from a long lost friend. I found this to be wonderful for two reasons:

1. Even though your horoscope often tells you that you’ll be contacted by a long lost friend it never seems to actually happen, so I’m glad it did.

2. I really like this person and I was just wondering the other day what had happened to her. How has her life turned out? Was she happy?

Fortunately the answer to the second question is YES! Apart from a few of the normal things that happen to people in life, she’s pretty happy I think. One of the lovely things about her getting in touch was that she had taken the trouble to read all of the posts on my other blog and make some comments about them. How amazing! This email arrived just at the point where I was wondering if there was any point to writing a blog? After all, no-one really responds (apart from my relatives and very close friends). Not even you – yes I’m actually talking to you now!

It made me think that it is really easy to start something new, but it’s really hard to keep going. Anyone can go along to the gym or walk to work and have a salad for lunch but it takes real commitment to keep walking to work and eating salad day after day. This is where the real commitment comes in, and sadly it’s something that many of us struggle with. Over and over again I find myself making resolutions about being more committed , more focussed and just plain better at everything, and over and over again I find myself failing and then feeling bad about it.

What’s to be done?

Okay, so I think the first thing is to be a little bit kind to yourself. After all, life is a bit rocky sometimes and we can’t be awesome all of the time. Secondly (and I’m being a bit contradictory here) don’t be so kind to yourself that you let yourself off the hook. You do need to keep going and keep trying new things and working hard. It’s a balancing act between kindness and self-improvement.

I think I’ve reached the point in this blogging challenge where I would normally give up, but I’m determined to push through this time. I didn’t mean that to sound heroic – it’s not like I’m climbing Mount Everest or doing battle with a life threatening illness or anything. I just mean that this is the point where I normally decide that it’s all a bit too hard, and who cares anyway?

You might think that I am a person who gives up too easily, and I’ll admit that this might be true, but this time I’m determined to keep going.

In his book “Harden Up!” Felix Economakis talks about the need to exercise our minds in order to keep our thinking muscles strong. As he says, in the right balance, stress and challenges promote growth and creativity. I think this is true. We all need a little push now and again to get things moving, otherwise we become lazy and learn how to float along without making any effort. If you are a blogging or writing or creating something beautiful, there are going to be times when you just feel like giving up, but I think these are the very times when you should try to keep going.

I hope that if you are conducting some kind of personal challenge, you’ll just keep on going. If you have any suggestions for how to get past the point where you would like to give up, I would love to hear from you.

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